


The Alethiometry of Time Travel and the Humans and Dæmons Who Come and Go With It

by timeheist



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: F/M, Multi, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-13
Updated: 2012-12-13
Packaged: 2017-11-21 02:01:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/592198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/timeheist/pseuds/timeheist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They’ve run together, she and he, from the Magisterium, for too long. They have each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Alethiometry of Time Travel and the Humans and Dæmons Who Come and Go With It

He barely even remembers the first time it happened. He remembers waking up in a field, his clothing torn and blood on his face and the palms of both hands, Caesita looking particularly scruffy as a meerkat, nipping at his nose. No one had ever warned him that a Time Lord’s dæmon changed when they did… Perhaps the alethiometrists of Gallifrey had thought it common knowledge. Still, at least a millennium on it’s like ripping off a very large, particularly adhesive plaster. Yes, it’s agonizingly painful and yes he thinks the pain will never end but it does, and by now he knows that she will always be there to relieve it. They’ve run together, she and he, from the Magisterium, for too long. They have each other.

Even if she does have fur instead of wings, and an extra pair of legs, and has apparently decided an appropriate form to take is one so gangly that he really wishes the TARDIS hadn’t chosen this precise moment to crash. He finds that he quite likes her new form, in fact, when her sharp teeth on his shredded suit stop him from becoming a red smear on the face of Big Ben. All he’d leave would be a mourning dæmon, turning to Dust, and the faces of friends who would no longer recognize him.

They both climb out of the library – which Caesita insists is the swimming pool, really, but beggars can’t be choosers – half an hour later and come face to face with a little girl and a dæmon. She’s too young for her dæmon to have settled yet but the form of a cat seems fitting by the time she has bullied-or-mothered him into her kitchen for unidentified fried goods and early morning companionship. Companions are, he supposes, entirely up his street and since he’s still cooking he can’t exactly say no.

Caesita is unimpressed, and calls him all sorts of names behind her back. Cradle-grabber is the worst of them all but he knows she’s just tired, and tires out tickling her behind the ears to see how she takes it. The ears turn out to be a good idea. Caesita wants to get to know her Time Lord before some human, and he can’t really blame her, but she’d accepted his wandering ways a long time ago. They bond over their mistrust of baked beans and toast and newfound fondness for the Scottish, and when they find the crack in Amelia and Meinecke’s bedroom wall… Caesita hasn’t got the time to sulk.

***

The next time they meet Amelia she’s all grown up and Meinecke is no longer a cat. He’s not the self-assured tabby he’d been five minutes – not five minutes, apparently – ago but a self-assured and very vocal tokay gecko instead. The Doctor’s also found the time to find out that Caesita is a maned wolf, and a particularly lanky one at that. Seems fitting with his legs like a giraffe and atrocious balance in his new regeneration. Still, he can’t help but check his shoulder every few seconds, expecting to find a magpie pecking his ear instead of a maned wolf nibbling his fingers.

Amelia’s changed a lot too (she’s called Amy now, for one thing) but she still wants to travel with him and the Doctor decides that it’s just as well, even if she and her dæmon seem to be keeping something secret. He and Caesita have never been very good at being alone, for a dæmon and Time Lord (except of course there was also the TARDIS, who had always liked Caesita better than him; girl-talk, he’d assumed). Too much time inside one’s own head, they’d decided centuries ago, only led to things going wrong. Previous companions and their dæmons had felt much the same… Especially the Brigadier’s red deer doe, Marsha; he could still feel the bruises, when he thought about them.

They get along well enough, quickly enough, and Amy becomes one of the herd within a matter of days. The Doctor doesn’t explain that he’s an alien right away and he hopes to never have to explain that a few weeks ago, his dæmon had a different form. Caesita has grown quite fond of Meinecke as well, and both he and Amy find themselves traipsing the length of the TARDIS as he’s given the guided tour. The Doctor finds a swelteringly hot greenhouse for him to busy himself in and the TARDIS supplies an air-conditioned room next door for Amy to relax. For a few weeks it’s just him and Amy – Caesita and Meinecke – against the universe once more.

***

Rory turns out to be nice enough once the Doctor gets to know him but he wishes Amy had thought to mention she was engaged when he offered to whisk her away. Caesita hasn’t quite gotten over the embarrassment yet and refuses to introduce herself to Rory’s possibly over-protective Siberian husky dæmon, Phoena; it works out well enough because Rory and Phoena haven’t warmed to either of them yet either.

He does his best to let the two of them work it out on their own but he’s not quite used to not meddling. While Amy and Rory and Meinecke and Phoena go off on dates of their own he and Caesita mull in their own memories until it gets painful and, inevitably, they decide to follow. They try to keep themselves to themselves but they’re both clumsy in these new bodies of theirs and besides, they need to keep an eye on the companion, what with someone or something leaving windows open with a subtle knife all around the universe.

Very problematic, especially when a piece of his TARDIS turns up in the middle of one of the windows, and Rory and Phoena disappear, never to have existed. It’s even worse than the multiple dreams of singing birds – too similar to the song that Caesita had, in his last regeneration, for the Doctor not to work things out fairly quickly – and Meinecke skittering over a pile of Dust, getting it all over her body, as Amy just sobs and sobs and sobs over what remains of Rory. It’s even worse for him and Caesita, this time, to remember them both so well and watch the most important two in the TARDIS carry on living with no idea why they’re crying.

***

There’s a period where it feels like an intercision, the disappearance of Rory and Phoena, and then they’re back with stories of ancient Rome and another life and the subtle knife of his TARDIS is no more. Amy and Meinecke treat it as a miracle and don’t question anything; they spend three days locked together in their room. No one mentions that he and Caesita nearly died as well because that is not how it happens, and after all, the Ponds and their dæmons shouldn’t be sad on their honeymoon.

Caesita leaves bloody bite marks in the back of his hand from his refusal to spend the day with River and Furcifer, and he points out that maned wolves would typically eat kangaroo rats and they’d probably been better off when Caesita was a magpie. They drop them both off at the prison with little more than a single passionate kiss which the Doctor feels is quite enough excitement for one week. Caesita as always, disagrees. Still, half an hour later she licks up the blood and nuzzles him gently, and by way of apology the Doctor pops out to Svalbard and returns with a steak worthy of the panserbjørne.

As it turns out it isn’t long until they meet River again and this time, she’s not River at all, but Melody-the-daughter-of-the-Ponds and victim of the General Oblation Board. The Doctor only works it out when she regenerates (and isn’t that a surprise) but Caesita remains adamant that she could smell Furcifer on the monarch butterfly from miles away. They leave quickly, even River, because the fact that Hitler is all alone in the cupboard makes even the attempted murderess uncomfortable and if, by the end of the day, any of them wonder why Furcifer and River aren’t always together everyone is too polite to mention it (except for Meinecke, who Rory tells to shut up).

***

Cittàgazze is an absolutely terrible idea and it all goes wrong. One more thing to add to the list of things for which he and Caesita will never forgive themselves. The Ponds are old, and drifting away, and they should have known better than to try to hold on too tightly. Rose, Charley, Ace, Jamie, and everyone else in between should have been enough for them to finally learn better but they will always cling to those wonderful people and their wonderful dæmons for all the Dust in the universe. The spectres take Cittàgazze and all too soon Amy, Meinecke, Rory and Phoena are gone, stolen to another time and a different life that he can’t follow them to. Curse him for thinking he’d fooled the fabric of reality.

It’s his own stupid, sentimental fault for closing the windows, fool alethiometrist that he is, failure of a bygone planet and era. It’s clear that Furcifer agrees, even if River tries to put up a front of talking to him for her mother’s sake, but in the end the Doctor finds himself taking the last Pond home and slinking off with his tail as much between his legs as Caesita’s. What’s the point in being a hero if you don’t get your reward? Why not, he argues with Caesita, sobbing into her fur like he said he never would, just give up now?

And then along comes Clara. She doesn’t come along, Pond, like Amy and her company had but instead comes with a regal and warm air, preceded by a little elf owl with grandeurs of greatness. Clara the seemingly impossible, Sanık who is exactly who he says he is and appearances be damned. Caesita claims there’s a mystery to be solved and who are they to continue moping and not only that, but Oxford needs saving, just like it always does. Clara and Sanık agree and well:

Who is the Doctor to refuse his companions and dæmons alike anything?

**Author's Note:**

> One of two changes have been made to fit Pullman's world, and I may have put too much care into deciding the forms of everybodys' dæmons, for which I have to thank, as always, [The Dæmon Page](daemonpage.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=15219) (you can hunt down the analyses there to work out my reasoning). For anyone interested I consider my dæmon to be a spectacled bear by name of Eoin. The same goes for the naming of the dæmons. Amy is the Girl Who Waited, and St Monica is the Patron Saint of patience, so Meinecke was the closest male approximation. Caesita more or less translates to blueness in Latin (TARDIS). Phoena comes from the phoenix and Rory's habit of not staying dead. Furcifer is a genus of chameleons which I thought suited River's nature well. And Sanık is Turkish and means defence (as in, defence mechanism (ie. I am not a dalek)). Marsha means respectable, because good old Brig.


End file.
